Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday May 20, 2011 @11:14AM
from the can-you-think-of-any-reason-not-to dept.

chill writes "After years in development, a film adaptation of William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer is finally moving forward. According to a press release, the film has secured sales from distributors at Cannes and visual effects work has already begun. Filming will begin in 2012 with locations in Canada, Istanbul, Tokyo, and London."

That was an OK adaptation from the perspective of making it readily available to the general movie-going public, but really missed the feel of the short story, and with Gibson the feel is everything. Hopefully they'll do it better this time. Please no Keanu, unless you can somehow train him not to speak in a manner that makes you wonder where he hid his surfboard.

If there are some people who do not like it, that would be normal. But if you take something like 'I am Legend' which was a great story, then alter the story so the the main character looks good, then you have a problem.

LotR? Good, because it mostly stuck to the book. Starship Troopers? Bad.

I can understand if a movie maker does not like the story. But then PLEAAAASE don't buy the rights just for the title. Make your own story that you DO like and let somebody else, who does a better job, turn the book into

To be clear, the movie and the book 'Starship Troopers' have almost nothing in common. There is a war with aliens that look like bugs and Rio gets nuke from space. Besides that, the whole fucking plot is thrown out. Not the same story - AT ALL!

And here is a good bitch about sci-fi book film adaptations. Where is the minority report in the film 'Minority Report'. They fucked the plot so badly the title no longer exists in the film. Asshats!

Whether you want to see all of the political information on screen or not is one thing, but Starship Troopers turned the political segments into a straight parody of Heinlein's views. You shouldn't piss on the author while making his book into a movie.

As far as his views in ST being fascist, I disagree. They're not mainstream, but not totalitarian either. There was a democracy, you just had to earn the right to participate through community service. I'm not 100% sold on the idea, but it has some merit.

As much as I'd (in theory) really like to see this movie, I can't imagine not being completely let down by it, even it is being done by the same guy who did the wonderfully craptastic Cube (not knocking it, it was just kinda low budget). I can't imagine a modern audience doing anything but laughing at all the neon, Jamaican piloted space ships and a 3D internet. You'd probably have to remove those entirely and then what do you have?

On the plus side, Gibson has always said to take the idea of there being a N

The last time this movie was in "pre-production" it was being directed by some guy whose only experience was directing Britney Spear videos. I won't believe this one until I have a ticket in my hand.

Your observations were pretty off the mark, enough that I had to respond.

The music video director you are surely referring to is Chris Cunningham who personally I believe is one of the few people who could actually pull this film off. His work is typically very imaginative but in a dark and edgy way, though he does come from directing music videos and has no feature length directing experience (though he never did any Britney Spears). He pulled out apparently because he did not have final cut approval.

Also, Gibson's short story from the collection 'Burning Chrome', titled 'New Rose Hotel', was made in into a wonderful film by the same title directed by my all time favorite director, Abel Ferrara. Chris Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento star.

I read it a few years ago. Apart from being quite badly written, it was painfully dated and showed a distressing lack of understanding of basic computing concepts on the part of the author. I can imagine that someone who read it in the '80s would find it exciting and groundbreaking, but it just hasn't stood the test of time.

Yup. William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter. He had never even touched a computer at the time.

If you're expecting anything even remotely resembling actual computery stuff, prepare for disappointment; nobody's going to be nmapping a target and then running sshnuke.

I would disagree that it's badly written; it's not. It's just not written clearly; it's somewhat experimental, so it often makes very little analytical sense. The idea was to convey the overwhelming feeling of constant future-shock, where as soon as you think you have a grip on some new technology a radically newer one comes out. It's kinda confusing if you try to force sense onto things; you're supposed to just absorb it and ride the wave, like the protagonist talks about early in the book IIRC.

On the other hand, it is a pretty cool story. I mean, Molly the cybernetic assassin has razor blade fingers and shades built in to her eye sockets (her tear ducts were re-routed to the roof of her mouth, so she spits instead of crying).

Basically, it's enjoyable as long as you follow the MST3K mantra. If you expect anything that even remotely resembles the realities of computing, you'll be disappointed; it's as factual The Hobbit, except set against a postmodern cybernetic background.

(It's actually kinda weird - geeks seem to have this strange idea that all science fiction should be extrapolation based on current trends, and there's no room at all for pure fantasy with a sciencey coating)

The book was decades ahead of its time, it's more topical than ever. Gibson is a miracle, imo, not only because he pretty accurately predicted a future where corporations rule the world and information and information exchange has become omnipresent (ok, he overdid both a bit, but what SciFi author doesn't?), he did so without any idea of how a computer works (IIRC he said in an interview that 'til he got one, which was long after '84, he thought there's some kinda crystals spinning inside or something like that).

Gibson's Neuromancer world is a bit more advanced than ours, in good and in bad, extrapolate our reality, add a bit of pessimism and you'll get there. More corporation control, more religious lunacy, bigger separation between wealthy and poor, more integration of technology into human bodies. Some parts of it are reality already or are "around the corner". A bit more dystopian, a bit more seedy, a bit more corporation controlled, but essentially... I think the mood is quite well captured. It's a gloomy near-future setting, which will probably be near-future for the forseeable future, as it was 25 years ago.

This would have been easier to put together 20 years ago, I think they tried to do a movie a couple of times already but it fell apart.

Nowadays, this is going trying to take the 'futuristic' concepts of global spanning data networks and present them to people that pretty much grew up with them in place, minus the neural interfaces... It was a great book, and I remember in the late 80's was excited to see they were working on a movie. Now, well, I don't think they're going to be able to pull it off.

Next up, Snow Crash? Why not, these things are going to have to be changed so much to make sense in today's terms of technology that they're not really going to be able to resemble the original except in a vague sort of way.

I don't think it would be too hard for younger people to grow into the setting. For us, the big deal was that information exchange and the "universal telepresence" that was flashy and cool. For them, this part will probably be trivial. But there are other things in the book that might be quite interesting to a younger audience that grew up with the omnipresent internet and the ability to access information and reach whoever you want at will and leisure at any moment of your life. Who knows, for them it may

Neuromancer was never about technology; it was about the effects technology has on society. It could be set in the Wild West without changing the underlying themes of disenfranchisement and alienation.

Due to how badly Gibson's big screen adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic butchered the original story, I am worried this too will tarnish my memories of William Gibson's works. Some stories are better off not being made into movies at all versus being made into a bad movie.

While we are at it, lets ruin a few other cyberpunk classics such as Snowcrash by Stephenson and Software/Wetware from Rudy Rucker.

The movie has a high percentage of suckage. I'll be positive and have hope for something great but I'll be surprised if this is any better than Tron Legacy ended up being... (note: I actually liked a lot of Legacy... just didn't live up to expectations)

Due to how badly Gibson's big screen adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic butchered the original story, I am worried this too will tarnish my memories of William Gibson's works. Some stories are better off not being made into movies at all versus being made into a bad movie.

While we are at it, lets ruin a few other cyberpunk classics such as Snowcrash by Stephenson and Software/Wetware from Rudy Rucker.

BTW: Get off my lawn.

technoid_

Yeah, that worries me slightly too. The screenplay of Johnny Mnemonic was poor. I think if they borrowed some of the folks that worked on The Matrix trilogy, the filmmakers might actually be able to weave a good story. I think the entire premise hinges on remaining exactly true to the book and only deviating in the slightest, most invisible ways. They should even borrow dialogue from the book.

I don't remember there being anything in "Neuromancer" that couldn't be updated to today's technology without any problems, but I don't have much faith in Hollywood's ability to make it appealing to 'Joe Sixpack' (always the highest priority) while still remaining appealing to geek types.

You should not watch the movie. Think: How do you want to cram a 20+ hour read into 120 minutes? You will see a lot of it cut, by the simple laws of movie making. Gibsons books also tend to "suffer" from something I vastly enjoy: He doesn't explain jack. He expects you to know what an Ono-Sendai is, or to puzzle it together from the context, you're expected to know the world and if you don't, well, sucks to be you. It actually improves the experience of a dog-eat-dog future where nobody is holding your hand

I think Neuromancer has aged quite well. Sure, we dont use VR goggles, but its still early days as far as the net goes. Bionics, custom drugs and corporate espionage...well...I never believed that a company like Blackwater would come into existence...

...I never believed that a company like Blackwater would come into existence...

And that's just the one that everybody knows about because of their bad habit of killing Iraqi civilians in public. How many other "private security firms" are there out there doing even more questionable things that we never hear about?

Blackwater pays enough and, likely, acts enough like The Mob, with obvious capabilities to carry out any "suggestions" they might make as to the consequences of certain decisions, that any startup competition soon becomes a subsidiary.

Their pricing (about 10X the cost of actual military) is further evidence they're not being undercut by anyone.

I too think Neuromancer aged well. In fact it inspired "The Matrix" and that movie did well.

Think about it. Case is comparable to Neo, Molly is comparable to Trinity, and Armitage is comparable to Morpheous. I'm not saying that the Matrix has a one-to-one relationship with Neuromancer, just that I can see that "The Matrix" was inspired by Nueromancer. Especially since Gibson coined the phrase "cyberspace", "jacked-in", and "the matrix" and used them within Neuromancer.

For the love of all that is holy and unholy, please do NOT shoot this movie in 3D. Tell the story as close to "as written" as you can and put good visuals backing the story up on the screen and the audience will get it. No, cyberpsace does not have to be in 3D to tell the story correctly. It can all be done in 2D and tell an amazing story including all the cyberspace portions of it. And for fuck's sake - get the Sprawl correct!! The Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis must have that same Blade Runner-esque fee

Agreed. Do the matrix scenes in 3D, and do the non matrix scenes in 3D with no depth. This would make it an interesting watch as it would be more true to the material (at least to me). God, I need to reread that one again, it was pretty amazing even as recent as 2002.

The highest score director Vincenzo Natali has on IMDB is 7.5/10 for the 1997 Scifi film "Cube". He has completed 11 projects as director and has never reached a 8/10 on any of them. Average scores by project type are listed here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0622112/filmorate [imdb.com]
Average scores (IMDB) by type of involvement in projects: ---
Art Department 7.24 --
Director 6.59 --
Writer 6.84 --
Thanks 6.77 --
Actor 8.10 --
Miscellaneous Cr

Not Spielberg. He really screwed up "AI" simply by going too long. He insisted on doing the whole treatment by Kubrick but I believe Kubrick would have had the foresight to know that the whole ending part of that movie was extraneous. If Spielberg would have simply left the story off where the android "kills" himself if would have been a great movie. He needs to keep away from sci-fi now...

1. take the shawshank redemption. one of the most beloved movies ever. but it was a box office disappointment. some movies grow on you over time, prove durable and to wonderful stories. but due to bad marketing or timing, just didn't recoup the production fee. i'm not saying watchmen is as good as the shawshank redemption, but reactions have been mostly positive

2. not enough people showed up at the theatres to make the thing profitable. of course, it wasn't even remotely unpo

Though I don't think it was, the "gross" and "budget" numbers on the wikipedia page for it show it having a ROI of over 40% (though I know nothing about movie accounting and what budget actually includes) which doesn't seem like losing to me...

Your X and Z axes are independent, but your Y axis is a function of X and Z, mostly X. I think what you wanted for Y was, "Is it any good?" and then you'd have a $ axis as a function of the other three, but still mostly of X.

"We have introduced the idea to demographic panels assembled from shoppers at Mall of America, and feedback is generally ambivalent, with many blank stares. However, we have found that this movie will do better in the 18-34 female demographic if 'Neuromancer' is retitled 'New Romancer.' Also, there should be more bodily humor and scatological jokes. 'Too weird', 'I don't get it', 'Something your weird brother would watch', and a doodle of a cat is the dominant impression of the movie from the questionnaire forms. We also suggest cutting the running length from 2 hours, 30 minutes to 45 minutes. This can be accomplished with little damage to the source material and remaining true to the author's original intent, by removing only the plot and the coherency. Plot and coherency seemed to matter the least to the demographic in our surveys."

This is probably the single most important reason I think Big Content is ultimately more harmful to our culture than good. Copyright one can always be infringed if there are no other options, but how does one battle a torrent of mediocre crap?

Fortunately, technology is putting power back into the ones who have vision, and not just cash.

The action takes place in a storage unit and other structures (soundstage), on a highway (backlot), in a small boat on open water (soundstage/pool/CG), in a nonphotorealistic virtual world (greenscreen/CG), and a crazy manmade island (OK, that's an expensive set, but could probably be a few matte paintings/set extensions plus soundstage interiors). What am I forgetting?

I think the more difficult obstacle to a Hollywood treatment is that the presence of a vaginal dentata is a major plot point.

As someone who didn't read books like Neuromancer or Snow Crash until the early 2000's I don't know about this. The books were originally done in a time when the internet and virtual reality were something people thought they were more than they really are, ideas that lead to such nonsense as the latest Tron movie where a virtual world somehow creates it's own life form and can then come to...our life...Besides a lot of updating would need to take place, remember Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160GB in his

AI? Neural Interface? Industrial espionage through hacking? Abilty to shadow someone through an interface, or replay a previously recorded experience? I think you are thinking of Snow Crash more then Neuromancer. Neuromancer didn't have any VR, it had direct neural interfacing.

The nice thing about Gibson's cyberpunk novels is that the plot is generally compact enough that it should be relatively easy to fit it into a 2 hour movie.

I don't think the subject matter is nearly as dated as some are suggesting. Certainly, it's no more quaint than the junk Hollywood movies constantly put out. But really, a writer with a reasonable amount of talent and sense would update and improve any those elements. The problem, of course, is that good writing seems to be a scarce resource in Hollywood

Those who read the book know how horribly wrong a film adaptation can go... I think drawing parallels is relevant because both books have great movie potential, but also a huge amount of room for spectacular failure.

But the possibility to fail is no reason for not trying, so more power to them.:)

When Johnny Mnemonic came out I was so excited to see one of Gibson's books on the screen. The movie was horrible and completely butchered the material. There is no way that they can screw up Neuromancer that badly.

I read the book as a teenage and young adult. I noticed reading it that Gibson must have no experience with computers. I also found that part where written that well. I think its loved because ppl wanted to be hip about computers in the 80s and it been riding on that ever since.

Neuromancer is not an easy read. The text is very dense. I reread it last year and, even at my education level, found I had to go back and reread many passages when I realized I had missed important bits of action (the death of an important character happens so quickly and non descriptively you have to read the passage several times to make sure it actually happened).

That being said, this book will translate magnificently to the big screen. As old as it is, it hasn't lost its futuristic feel and foresight; although, wherever megabytes of data are mentioned, they'll have to upgrade them to tera- or pentabytes. I am very much looking forward to this film, but it is still in the early stages and I've seen many promising projects like this die at later stages when the producers look at what's going on and don't get it.

Funny, I found it a very easy, page turning kind of read. Unlike, say, Dune, which I think if kind of tedious. I don't generally enjoy flowery, overly descriptive language in fiction. To me, Neuromancer was poetic, but sparse.

As long as we don't have Keanu playing the main character, I think this movie will be all right.

As old as it is, it hasn't lost its futuristic feel and foresight; although, wherever megabytes of data are mentioned, they'll have to upgrade them

Not to Tera or Peta. Everyone's used to Tera, and Peta's being used in big arrays (and is the next step up). Exa or Zetta, or better yet, a made-up big-sounding prefix: gooliobytes or congrebibliobytes. The benefit of the made up prefix is that the film isn't hilariously wrong (one way or the other) when viewed ten years later.

I'd have to agree with you that the unabridged version of Stranger in a Strange land is much better, but is it a genre novel? As I understood it, Heinlein wanted the book to straddle the line between 'mainstream' fiction and SF, much like Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five". It's intended by the author to be read either like the SF elements are real, or like they are either a metaphor or a delusion of one or more of the characters. In Stranger's case, the reader just about has to accept some SF elements as obj

Molly was in the Johnny Mnemonic short story but was replaced in the movie specifically so it wouldn't hurt a movie retelling of Neuromancer. Of course that was so many years ago and studios are so fond of changing details it's hard to tell if Molly will show up or if something else will be written in.... though I am not sure it really could be Neuromancer without Molly Millions...